"Teachers are the gardeners of humankind."

“It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity—and shape our lives accordingly.”Albert Einstein

The time has come to do more than set aside the month of November for the so-called honoring of Native American History. Speaking as a lifelong and ardent fan of the local professional football team, add one more voice to the chorus of those who believe that the retirement of the name to the annals of history is too long overdue. As Mohandas Gandhi said, “If you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”

Far too many implementations of social injustice would likely have polled quite well. It is more likely that the results of the recent poll regarding the team’s name have more in common with the “Stockholm Syndrome” than with indifference to such an objectionable epithet. As Paolo Freire posited in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.”

After moving the team from Boston to Washington, the original owner-and-founder of this franchise, George Preston Marshall, exhibited utter indifference for furnishing equal opportunity to people of color. Likely in an effort to avoid a civil rights lawsuit, the league compelled himto desegregate his team despite the owner’s long held tradition and beliefs. It was manifestly the right thing to do.

Many would welcome a similar action today with regard to a team name that is certainly no less dehumanizing than the hiring practices of decades ago. One need not look much farther than the dictionary to find this name associated with such words as “derogatory” and “disparaging“.

Consider the name change a first step to address the more than 500 broken treaties that litter our history. Exactly how do we honor Native Americans by reducing their cultural heritage to the archaic ethnic stereotypes represented by our corporate logos? What reverence is expressed by reducing those proud and vibrant peoples to caricatures and mascots? How can we remain so oblivious to the wrongs committed in the name of civilization?

Historically, the indigenous peoples of North America suffered a horrific tragedy when Europeans starting landing on these shores. The invaders exploited modest scientific advances in chemistry and metallurgy to produce weaponry that facilitated the conquest and usurpation of two continents. Explorers from the colonial powers, in the name of their respective monarchs, immediately started planting flags, claiming territories and absconding with precious metals.

The Hernando De Soto expedition rode through what is now called Florida, Georgia & Louisiana massacring entire villages. At one point his crew drove an entire village into a swamp and waited for them to drown. The Jesuit priest accompanying the expedition described De Soto in his journals as Satan incarnate. The accounts confirm the description.

Ultimately, however, the pathogens in the crew’s blood did the most damage. Eight in every ten adults of the 12 to 20 million citizens of the 500 Nations would fall to smallpox, mumps, measles and chickenpox prior to the arrival of the pilgrims in New England decades later. During the epidemic that followed, scarcely sufficient survivors remained to bury the dead.

Our own nation’s treatment of the surviving descendants fails to withstand close scrutiny on the moral plane. The incidents, too numerous to detail here, betray our collective intent: the Trail of Tears, the massacre at Wounded Knee, internment camps and reservations, the first effort at germ warfare at Fort Pitt, the wanton extermination of buffalo from the plains. Post-revolutionary America, with its lofty constitutional language intact, rejected incorporation of the native peoples and chose eradication instead.

Achieving a critical mass for change will require discipline. All those who believe it time for a reboot of the franchise will need to echo the words of the world weary Hinmatóowyalahtq’it, known to Europeans as Chief Joseph, and relay the message to the team ownership that as long as the name offends anyone, we will watch no more, forever.

[The original version of this Commentary appeared in the Prince George’s Sentinel on November 15, 2015.]

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“What do you do when a teacher is struggling in the classroom?We support them.What if you support them and they continue to struggle?We support them more…”

Conversation with the Finnish Minister of Education

In America, we have yet to learn that “sink-or-swim” isn’t even a good way to teach swimming, but it still constitutes the de facto professional development model in most school systems. Each autumn, more than 9,000 teachers greet our more than 125,000 students here in Prince George’s County. In any given year, it is likely that we replace about 10 percent of the teaching force. In bad years, it has been as high as 20 percent.

“Why so many?” you may ask, on the mistaken assumption that teaching is a highly-coveted gig. Our turnover issues, though, are the result of having learned little from the most celebrated model for public education in the world, as outlined in the documentary, “The Finland Phenomenon.”

In Finland, teachers provide a little less than 700 hours of direct instruction to students annually. Here, the average time for direct teacher/student interface nearly doubles that figure at nearly 1,100 hours.

For Finnish teachers, the remainder of the work day is devoted to inter-collegial collaboration, observation and job-imbedded professional development. American teachers scarcely have time to visit the restroom, much less for productive collaboration with peers.

Every teacher knows the three behaviors of effective instruction: planning, planning and more planning. However, our contractual allotment of 45 minutes for planning remains wholly inadequate to prepare for our daily 250-plus minutes of instructional delivery.

An overwhelming majority of our teachers devote both evenings and weekends to revising lesson plans, grading assignments and attempting home contacts. There is nothing more frustrating than spending an hour of preparation for an activity that will consume ten-to-fifteen minutes of a lesson.

Before and after the contractual school day, teachers volunteer to tutor, sponsor activities and perform administrative chores.

The 37.5-hour week is an absolute myth that should be relegated to the dustbin of history; ample evidence suggests that teachers, on average, dedicate 55 hours weekly to their vocation.

Conservative ideologues would have you believe that collective bargaining and due process impede progress in education while ignoring the inconvenient truth that teachers are unionized in Finland.

Talking heads seek to attribute blame for “low student achievement” in socio-economically challenged schools on teacher tenure while remaining curiously silent on the gross disparities in facilities and resources that reign here in the United States.

Furthermore, according to Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard, Finland makes no use of standardized testing. Instead, the No. 1 country in education provides for the equitable distribution of adequate resources and, then, trusts teachers to meet the needs of children.

[The original version of this Commentary appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on Thursday August 14, 2014.]

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When socializing with colleagues, the topic of conversation often turns to public education policy. A curmudgeon in the group invariably makes reference to “the good old days” marked by rote recitation of the times-tables, a time when all children were little engines of on-demand knowledge acquisition, and all teachers found a way to convey critical knowledge.

There is only one problem with the argument.

As so aptly clarified in Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error, such a period of educational attainment is but a figment of the collective imagination. Still, the halcyon days of our past remain a popular myth and are employed as a standard justification for leaving education appropriations as a percentage of the Gross National Product (GNP) right where they have been stuck for decades, somewhere within shouting distance of six percent since World War II.

Unfortunately, our Oz-like tendency to examine the past through rose-colored glasses is hampering efforts to provide adequate resources to prepare ALL children for the demands of the Age of Information.

As little as fifty years ago, a quarter of our children dropping out of school merited hardly a shrug of concern. Unfortunately, today’s drop-outs need no longer apply to the legitimate alternatives of that time.

The military has always required foot-soldiers for the skirmish line, but the equipment and weaponry of today are more advanced. Unlike the the days of old, marginally-literate high school drop-outs will find it a challenge to enlist in their service of choice.

Back then, the industrial sector welcomed former students to the workforce with the promise of a living wage for work that was often tedious and frequently hazardous. Today, those factories, when not relocated overseas, are automated and mechanized. Now, factories require writers-of-code and programmers for the robotics.

Our society continues to evolve, and technology is proving to be a double-edged sword creating careers for the highly-skilled while rendering many other trades obsolete. In a few short years, we will deal with the arrival of autonomous vehicles on our roads… How many truck, taxi and bus drivers will be put out of work? Who will create the training and the opportunities to replace that lost gainful employment?

The national goal of optimizing education for every child is a paradigm shift for this nation. “Reaching every child” is a laudable goal, but 21st Century schools will never simply arise from the 19th Century agrarian calendar, the 20th Century model of a school-day based on the assembly line, or stagnant funding streams. Our appropriation of education resources has t00 long favored the economic elite while turning a blind eye to the plight of the disadvantaged; that, too, must change.

Essential to our progress as a society, this ideal could be phrased no more eloquently than by the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, when she said, “The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children.”

[The original version of this piece appeared in the Prince George’s Sentinel on July 15, 2015.]

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“An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Enacted in response to the report of the Thornton Commission, the Bridge to Excellence Act promised equity of educational opportunity for all children in the state of Maryland. During the coming session that opens so close to the holiday in honor of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., let us implore both houses of the Maryland legislature to give serious consideration to the 620 page report of the Kirwan Commission which outlines the need for an increase of $2.6 billion to be invested in children.

Ultimately, how our state chooses to address the educational needs of all children concerns us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. Our fates are wrapped up in the fates of the most powerless among us, those who cannot vote. To paraphrase Dr. King, we cannot become all that we might become until all our children become all they are destined to become.

True equity & adequacy of educational opportunity for all children is in both the spirit and the letter of the Bridge to Excellence Act. The conclusions of Dr. Alvin Thornton’s celebrated commission made it clear. Dr. Thornton once said “We know the characteristics of successful, well-resourced schools; we simply allow lesser schools to exist.” It must be noted that the Free State still allows “difference” to be made legal in the schoolhouse and it would honor Dr. King’s memory if that could be remedied.

Because, long ago, “class size” was ruled not to be a “working condition” in the state of Maryland, neighboring school systems may avail themselves of different staffing ratios that create vastly different learning environments for children. There is no equity when my school system can only afford to hire forty-seven teachers per thousand students and your jurisdiction is able to afford sixty teachers per thousand. Teaching thirty-to-forty economically disadvantaged students will never be the same job as teaching twenty, or fewer, affluent students with access to a superfluity of resources at home.

Nor is there adequacy when my school system must choose between gasoline for the school buses or books for the media center while your school system manages to budget for both. Maryland has allowed such margins to exist for decades and the cascade of effects all roll down on teachers and students. The response of teacher burnout and teacher turnover in the understaffed and inadequately-equipped jurisdictions yield adverse effects on student achievement. That is difference made legal.

Six decades after Brown vs. the Board of Education, it is simply unconscionable that too many children-of-color and children-of-poverty attend schools that are ill-prepared to deliver the services mandated by the state, the nation, and our stipulated moral values. Sadly, business model accountability measures threaten to deliver only a stick where carrots are required. In ‘The Purpose of Education’ Dr. King wrote, “Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.”

It is no longer a mystery that the most effective schools tend to be blessed with greater resources – both human and material – the only mystery is why our political structure cannot achieve consensus on how to make those resources available to every child in every school. This despite the mandate of Article 8 in the Constitution of Maryland “The General Assembly, at its First Session after the adoption of this Constitution, shall by Law establish throughout the State a thorough and efficient System of Free Public Schools; and shall provide by taxation, or otherwise, for their maintenance.”

The passion that helped fill the streets of Annapolis in support of the Thornton recommendations must be rekindled, and we must call on our legislators to have the courage to stand for all children in all zip codes. Article 8, too, is a constitutional promissory note, not unlike the one alluded to by Dr. King in his most famous speech. Maryland has made strides in moving toward equity in the schoolhouse, though to be truly just on the moral plane, a thorough-and-efficient system of free public schools must make “sameness” legal for all children and the time for social justice for children is always “right now”.

[The original version of this Viewpoint appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal during January 2008. It has been revised for “timeliness”… ]

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In his Remarks on the Youth Fitness Program in 1961, John F. Kennedy proposed that, “The Strength of our democracy and our country is really no greater in the final analysis than the well-being of our citizens.” That was more than fifty years ago, and the healthcare paradigm in this nation still reflects a preference for a pound of medical intervention over an ounce of preventative measures for illness or injury.

The decades-long trend of increased childhood obesity, and the chronic maladies associated with it, should cause alarms to sound across this country. Even President Kennedy’s proposed minimum of “fifteen minutes of vigorous activity daily” was inadequate to the task of raising fitness levels. Our failure to address this issue will likely result in a generation of adults needlessly dependent on an already-strained healthcare system.

The ancient Greeks maintained that strong minds are improved by strong bodies.

Basic survival requires the presence of cleanair, purewater, nutritiousfood and shelter from the elements. In order to thrive, the offspring of sentient creatures also require access to time for “play” that nurtures survival skills and general fitness. Feline “play” is ultimately a rehearsal for the hunt. For human beings, “play” is crucial to the awakening of imagination and intellect.

Both structured and unstructured play time are absolutely essential to the physical, social and intellectual growth of children. Adequate time for play is critical to their physical and mental well-being. Thirty minutes a day at aerobic threshold is a bare minimum to maintain health. So, why are we still stuck with a fifteen-minute minimum recess for children in a place called “school”? Do we have a crisis in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)? Or, might it be that children simply have insufficient outlets for pent up energy?

We no longer allow children the time to be children. The time comes soon enough to set aside childish things…

For starters, in the dozen years since the enactment of the pernicious No Child Left Behind legislation, school schedules have been compelled to strictly narrow the curricular focus to reading and math skills. Schools are devoting ever more of the school calendar to test preparation and test administration because their very survival depends on achieving “acceptable” results on standardized assessments.

Instructional programs, especially in schools serving the socio-economically disadvantaged, have therefore experienced reductions in enrichment programs, physical education, recess, and even nap-time for pre-Kindergarteners. Such regimentation ignores the needs of the whole child.

In the current climate of test-based accountability, it will be no small task to allot time in the school day to provide an opportunity for children to achieve the recommended minimum of 30 minutes at aerobic threshold required to maintain optimal human health. So far, only a handful of states have achieved that goal.

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During an international crisis on the old West Wing television series, President Josiah Bartlett asks rhetorically, “Why is a Kundunese life worth less to me than an American life?” His speechwriter, Will Bailey*, retorts, “I don’t know, sir, but it is.”

That subtle act — telling truth to power — induces angst and spiritual upheaval in the fictional leader of the free world thereby inspiring a new policy initiative supporting human rights everywhere and declaring the preservation of human life to be a vital national interest. Alas, life has yet to imitate art…

Flash forward to real life in the 21st Century and access to an adequate public education for all children has become the social justice issue of our time. To date, this society has declined every entreaty to allocate sufficient resources to the task. So, social darwinism ends up the last recourse for children of certain zip codes.

Over a decade ago, the Thornton Commission finished its landmark study. Dr. Alvin Thornton put us all on notice by declaring that, “We know the characteristics of excellent schools; we simply allow disparities to exist.” Almost without exception, children of the socio-economically disadvantaged bear the brunt of those disparities.

In her new book, Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch presents compelling evidence that the achievement gap between ethnicities has closed over the last three decades. However, she also notes that the achievement gap between the affluent and the impoverished has nearly doubled in the same time frame.

For a whole host of reasons, children living in poverty arrive in kindergarten well behind their more affluent peers. When both parents work long hours at subsistence wages, for example, a child’s exposure to spoken language seldom approaches the 10,000 words daily that facilitate fluency. Affluence, on the other hand, furnishes more access to face time with parents as well as books, educational toys and experiential learning.

When a majority of a school’s population lives in poverty, lack of access to adequate educational resources compounds the challenges faced by rank-and-file educators.

In Prince George’s County, a super-majority of children live below the poverty line, and some schools have concentrations approaching 100 percent. Our annual per-pupil-spending still hovers close to 80 percent of our neighbors to the west, virtually the same proportion as in the early ’80s, and keeping salaries “competitive” with our neighbors translates into lower staffing ratios and, therefore, larger classes.

Simple maintenance of an inadequate effort will never yield the superior results we seek. More importantly, undifferentiated results will never arise from differentiated circumstances despite the harshest remonstrations of the “No Excuses” sect.

Our children remain far more likely to arrive hungry in class and to enter an overcrowded classroom staffed by an inexperienced educator. Our students remain far less likely to profit from enrichment courses and summer programs.

So, when did we surrender to the idea that young Prince Georgians will receive but a fraction of a complete education?

To echo the words of Will Bailey: I don’t know, friends and neighbors, but we did.

*The West Wing character

[The original version of the “Commentary” appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on October 20, 2014. It has been revised and expanded.]

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You know the rules, of course. There are no free calls or lifelines. Here is your piece of chalk. You are on your own…

Answer fifteen straight questions correctly and you will win the grand prize of a Teaching Certificate. This certificate will guarantee you the privilege of struggling against impossible odds for three decades to win the hearts and minds of the 5,700 children likely to enter your classroom.

Now, let’s answer the first question for which the prize will be the much-coveted reduced-interest-rate on your mortgage. If you miss at any time, you will revert back to the consolation prize of a ream of paper. So, let’s get to the first question!

“A person described as a Jack-of-All-Trades is also characterized as a Master of …”

A. NunB. OneC. NoneD. Education

There is a lot riding on this. So, think it through carefully.

The contestant wavers. “A” and “B” are obviously the distractors. It seems a fairly sure bet that item “C” is the answer, but our contestant knows some teachers and item “D” remains a troubling possibility.

The audience is in suspense as the contestant wrings her hands and wipes her forehead and fervently wishes she could call a friend or poll the audience.

So, let us discuss her quandary.

Teaching is not just one job. Classroom instructors hold a panoply of part-time jobs that require them to engage in frenetic multi-tasking simply to survive.

“Part-time clerical?” you ask. From Advanced Placement to Special Education, most teachers drown in a morass of paper: endless corrections with no hope of reprieve, data-entry, Individual Education Programs, letters of recommendation, requests for daily individual progress reports, quarterly progress reports and gradesheets (and the computation thereof!), to name but a few.

Other professionals staff out various tasks; teachers carve time out of their evenings and weekends to do it all themselves.

“Part-time security guard?” you ask. The assignment of insufficient support personnel in the building leaves teachers with the responsibility of being in the hallway before school, between classes and for some portion of their so-called “planning” period supervising children in passage. Instead of organizing as one class departs and preparing for the next to arrive, potential instructional time is lost at the beginning and end of every class because keeping a lid on the pressure cooker in the hallway is a much higher priority in most schools.

“Part-time detective?” you ask. Because much of the information in the school database is obsolete within months of being acquired, it can take weeks to make the “required” parental contact prior to administrative intervention for attendance or behavior problems. Negotiating the labyrinth of disconnected phone lines, prior employment, changed addresses and serial guardianship can be a daunting task, especially in schools where 30% of the student body rotates between the ninth and the twelfth grade.

“Part-time counselor?” you ask. Go ahead and scold your students about missing assignments only to discover that one is living in a homeless shelter, or that another is living in a home for unwed mothers with an ailing six-month infant and no health care. Just luring some of these children into the schoolhouse constitutes a daily miracle as they confront the onset of adult consequences during adolescence. How does the school deliver meaningful supports to such students when teachers routinely have 190+ students and guidance counselors may advise 480 students?

“Part-time administrator?” you ask. The administration, too, is consistently understaffed. Teachers are enlisted, therefore, to help manage the school. Ostensibly, this serves to train future administrators, but such time would be better-spent planning lessons if better instruction were the primary function.

The inevitable desire to see increased academic performance leads teachers to accept unpaid committee assignments and underpaid department chairmanships that invariably consume far more time than foreseen.

“Part-time instructor?” you ask. Invariably, it is instructional priorities that suffer as typical teachers struggle to satisfy the myriad responsibilities that comprise their workday. Do you want your child’s teacher perfecting a lesson plan, providing feedback on some written work, OR standing in front of the school counting the school buses as they arrive? Which of these sounds like an optimal use of the talent pool?

The time has come for teachers to perform the task for which they are trained.

In most cases, teachers just want to teach. Teachers need the time to plan & deliver instruction and, then, assess whether learning has taken place. If the improvement of learning outcomes is the goal, then respect the act of teaching by severely reducing, if not entirely eliminating, non-instructional duties.

The community must find a way to furnish adequate human resources in support of teachers and children.

Much ado has been made in recent months about the projected teacher shortage. That much-discussed shortfall of educators is a figment of our collective imagination.

There is no shortage of persons certified to teach in this nation. There is a shortage of people willing to accept a 60-hour workweek for a 35-hour paycheck.

Former teachers do not disappear from the face of the earth. They quit the profession for just cause after dispassionately examining the ratio between heartache and reward. Teachers come into the classroom for the opportunity to teach children, and they leave because they are systematically denied the opportunity to excel at their chosen endeavor.

Our children deserve more than a frazzled Jack-of-All-Trades in their classrooms. They require the focus of a Master-of-One-Trade and until such time as the primary functions of teachers are delivery-of-instruction and assessment-of-student learning, we must anticipate a dearth of contestants for any game show called “Who Wants to Be a Teacher?”

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Exodus 5: 10-11 — “And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go ye, get your straw where ye can find it: yet not aught of your work shall be diminished.“

Human willingness to endure suffering has limits. When subjected to an unreasonable workload, those who labor will eventually seek any alternative to ceaseless toil. The burden of national expectations — the edict to leave no child behind, for example — have been placed squarely on the shoulder of educators with predictable results. Educators pose the question, “Where are the increased human and material resources to meet this vastly expanded goal for our Public Schools?” Our society has mostly responded with Exodus 5: 11, see above.

Recently, the media have shared the concerns of school systems struggling to recruit educators into their classrooms. Nationwide, teacher preparation programs also report insufficient enrollment to furnish the replacements for the looming wave of baby-boomer retirements. Do the math: educators are leaving the profession faster than we can prepare their replacements.

These stories are becoming a rite of autumn as schools open, and the trend is no longer sustainable.

Late each spring, thousands-upon-thousands of teachers — most of whom are effective practitioners in the classroom — pack up their materials one last time, raise the white flag of surrender and tender letters of resignation. The issue is most apparent in regions with high concentrations of poverty; it is not uncommon for such schools to experience a complete turnover of the faculty every few years. Dr. Richard Ingersoll established long ago that in excess of 50% of teachers do not make it to a sixth year in the classroom.

It is true that not all teachers leave the profession. A tiny portion will receive promotions. A larger group will migrate to greener educational pastures. Too many, however, succumb to the despair of unwieldy demands in the workplace and simply find another line of work. Recently, during an impromptu exit interview, an about-to-be-former educator responded tearfully when asked what she would do next. “Anything else!” She doubled her salary and works in the IT industry, now.

What is it like to teach in 2015? With but the rarest of exceptions, the teaching profession is characterized by lack of professional autonomy in addressing the educational needs of children, excessive intrusions on personal time, archaic resources, unreasonable caseloads, inadequate facilities and, to top it all off, vilification by the punditry and the political class.

Working conditions are so generally abhorrent that slightly more than 9% of the nation’s teaching force of 4.5 million fails to survive even the first year in public education. Every single year, several hundred thousand teachers simply walk away from a teaching credential that required several years to obtain. Across this thirty year career, a surfeit of educators has only existed during severe economic downturns when other work was scarce.

So, the shortage of teachers does not really exist. The nearly constant churn in the teaching force suggests, instead, the more intractable problem of economically-challenged school systems lacking the capacity to place committed educators in a position to effect positive change in the lives of children. Change that dynamic and a horde of former educators stands ready to return to the classroom.

The National Center on Teacher Quality has proposed five ways that school districts might stem the constant hemorrhaging of potential career teachers. NCTQ proposes the creation of improved career pathways, addressing inequities in teacher placements, embracing teacher-led professional development, supplying more job-imbedded time for collaboration and untethering teacher evaluation from tests. The impediments? Cost implications abound.

Unless the community is content to stifle the aspirations of educators and squander the dreams of children, the focus must soon shift attention away from annual recruitment of novices and over to the retention of more experienced, highly effective educators. Making every classroom a manageable workplace must become the national priority. Our children deserve nothing less.

The annual exodus of teachers from the profession should result in the sounding of klaxons across this nation because it places the next generation of children at risk. Turnover, however, is the only logical outcome of abrogated contracts, classroom overcrowding, obsolete materials, lack of support and leaking roofs. All who abandon the vocation of shaping young minds are declaring forthrightly that they simply refuse to gather their own proverbial straw.

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A reader once asked, “Why don’t you ever write positive articles about the good things that good students do in our schools?” Rest assured, dear readers, that motivated students are among the principal reasons that many teachers endure, despite daunting challenges, for decades.

One such young lady grew up in El Salvador. Witness, at a very tender age, to the armed barbarism of the Death Squads along her neighborhood street, she persevered in her newly-adopted country. She might have withdrawn into precocious nihilism, but instead remained bright and ebullient despite her early introduction to the unspeakable horrors of humankind. With an elementary grammar and a reader, she had taught herself to speak French, virtually unaided, to just short of near-native fluency prior to her arrival in my classroom while still learning English as a second language.

In her second year of French, she memorized and performed recitations of La Fontaine’s “Les Animaux malades de la peste” and Perrault’s “Le Petit chaperon rouge” for the advanced classes. The memory of this intellectual feat still stupefies me. She hugged and thanked me when she got the best possible score on a competitive National Exam though my contribution had been, at best, that of a pedestrian giving directions to a passerby. Later, she received a full-ride scholarship and graduated with honors.

Many are the remarkable reminiscences that teachers might share.

Such recollections, however, also plant the seeds for the second career crisis suffered by many a teacher. The first? Teachers quickly realize that they are expected to deliver far too much for far too many young people with far too few resources. The most heartfelt and patient ministrations are spread too thin on a clientele of overwhelming number.

Later, usually between the third and fifth year, teachers begin to question their relevance in the educational process. The strongest students succeed admirably no matter who is teaching; the weakest students fail to thrive academically despite even herculean efforts; and finally, an overwhelming number of average students are content to slide by with meeting minimal requirements. If internalized, this can lead to feelings of professional impotence and futility akin to the feeling of walking up a very long escalator in rapid descent.

Teachers must frequently accept on faith, alone, that their efforts are producing desired effects on the academic achievement of students. Occasionally, students return years later to inform teachers that instruction has borne fruit, but such anecdotal evidence often fails to overcome a feeling of futility. Let’s call this feeling “Instructional Dysfunction Syndrome”. Even though it is more perception than reality, it ends too many teaching careers prematurely.

As tempting as it may be, taking too much pride in the high achievers that cross our thresholds is pointless. As the French are so fond of saying, “Even a blind pig occasionally finds a truffle.” Chances are that the high achiever’s successes are more accurately attributed to familial support and personal motivation than to inherently superior instructional practice. Such students likely succeed no matter who delivers instruction.

Students at the other end of the spectrum tend to command more attention from teachers in the public schools. Low achievers tend to exist in greater numbers. Their needs are immeasurably greater. If left unattended, their effect on the learning environment can be indescribably detrimental. While simple human concern for weaker students is involved in attending to their varied needs, motivated self-interest is also a factor in tailoring instruction to suit that demographic.

Fairly early in my career a defiant student admonished my efforts to inspire him, “You can’t teach me, cuz I won’t learn.” How does a student arrive in High School capable of such an observation? How are the Public Schools going to overcome willful and obstinate ignorance? What resources will be required to surmount such negative socialization and how do we persuade legislators to allocate them? These are questions that deserve answers soon.

Once, a student endured my panglossian lecture on the concept of cause-and-effect as related to grades. He was informed that if he did not study he would not be able to pass my quizzes and tests, and that if he did not pass quizzes and tests and neglected his assignments, then passing the class would be, at best, a dubious proposition. This student very calmly responded, “I’ve failed classes before. I’ll fail classes again. I hate school.”

Frankly, this mindset has always been impenetrable to this lifelong learner. While never the “best” of students, self-directed learning was my passion long before knowing the term “autodidact“. Early on, school represented my escape from the endless chores of farm life. Four decades later the names of my primary school teachers still resound: first grade, Mrs. Keller; second grade, Mrs. Haines (no relation); third grade, Mrs. Stickley; fourth grade, Mrs. Turner; fifth grade, Mrs. Houghton; six grade, Mrs. Marden.

Middle school brought new challenges: French, Mrs. Barbara Russell; Music, Mr. Harold Fox; Math, Mrs. Gensler and Mr. MacKenzie; English, Mr. St. Clair; Social Studies, Mrs. Holmes; Physical Education, Mr. Lindquist and Mr. Proctor. Regrettably, the synapses that held Industrial Arts and Science are lost. It was a shock that my school transcripts did not record the teachers of my classes.

The Fates were less than kind in my junior year. The vicissitudes of life compelled me to drop out of school in my senior year, but by then learning was a lifestyle. Each of the names mentioned here merits an article in tribute for having kept that passion alive. Herein resides their apotheosis.

To this day, I still cherish the memory of virtually every person I have ever called my teacher.

-Too frequently, my students called me… Mr. Ummm.

-On a good day, they called me Mr. Ummm-Haines.

-On a bad day, they called me by the name of the teacher down the hall.

-On test days they muttered expletives….

It is a challenge not to take it personally.

While researchers have proven that students genuinely “do not remember” chattering in class even when shown videotapes of themselves doing so, it is nonetheless annoying that children will quarrel vociferously about whether they were talking in class even when instruction has been halted and everyone has been eavesdropping. Visions invade my dreams of students pointing a remote control my way while vigorously and repeatedly pushing the mute button. At other times, I feel like little more than a speed bump on my students’ road to a social life.

Acute disinterest in anything academic has become the norm. For many students, it is way cool to play the fool. A disquieting aura of “chic” envelops the state of vacuousness. We inhabit a world where bright students will systematically give incorrect answers they know to be wrong in order to avoid being labeled a “nerd”. This is a rejection of societal values that must be overcome.

How and when will this lofty goal be accomplished?

According to the precepts of psychotherapy, patients must first realize that a problem exists, and second they must want a cure. Only then are they ready for the arduous process of therapy.

Looking at our schools through the rose-colored glasses of anecdotal success stories will lead some to the delusion that we have committed sufficient resources to the education of our children and that those left behind have none to blame but themselves. Both of those assumptions are erroneous.

We must undertake the hard work of seeking the cure. Too little has changed in the two millennia since Epictetus proclaimed “Only the educated are free.”

[This is a much revised version of a “Viewpoint” that appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Journal in June of 2000.]

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National Women’s History Month 2016 draws to a close. After centuries of wives being regarded as chattel, social justice for women has been on the rise since the mid-19th century’s passage of the Married Women’s Property Act in a number of American states.

Faded into the role of obscure metaphorical allusion is “the rule of thumb” which, according to English jurisprudence, granted husbands the right to chastise their spouses with a stick no more broad than his thumb.

In 1920, the power of women grew by leaps and bounds with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States establishing universal suffrage. The fundamental civil right of all citizens to vote has forever reshaped the American political landscape.

Dr. King would affirm decades later that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” One satisfactory benchmark for parity between the sexes remains untested: abolishing male-centric policies in the workplace around compensation and advancement. As Michael Moore proposed in “Where to Invade Next”, following Iceland’s lead and electing more women to representative bodies would be a good first step.

We still need the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Despite the passage of the landmark Lilly Ledbetter Act, bending the arc of moral justice toward “equal pay for equal work” remains an as yet unachieved dream.

It is well-documented that female nurse practitioners still earn 11 percent less than their male counterparts. For decades, female physician assistants, likewise, have noted discrepancies with the income of male colleagues. It is tragic enough that women have historically found themselves disadvantaged wherever they compete directly with men.

For the so-called “pink collar careers” like teaching, professions typically staffed predominantly by women, it is unconscionable that starting salaries now frequently fail to support families, or even to service the debt acquired while pursuing the mandated credentials.

Women, indeed, have come a long way; the work, however, is still in progress.

[The original version of the Commentary appeared in the now defunct Prince George’s Gazette on March 27, 2014.]